Communicating with your Archetypal FTM

Part One: The Energy

So grateful to Laura at Funk Life for her essay describing the Archetypal FTM. I plan to write a response to her piece from the perspective of a middle-aged woman who fit that archetype pre-Social Justice Age, but I’ll save that for a later time. Helena at Prude Posting also has shared an excellent and detailed description of The ROGD Teenager: A Profile. I’m sure if you’re slogging through the journey with a child who’s been indoctrinated into Trans ideology, you’ll recognize your kiddo in these descriptions. 

Much has been written and shared about how to communicate with these teens so as not to push them away and directly into the arms of awaiting “glitter families”. See Helena’s brilliant response piece to a parent seeking guidance: Communicating with someone who is indoctrinated. Lisa Marchiano’s interview with cult expert, Patrick Ryan was invaluable to me. I’ve also consumed hours and hours of content by Sasha Ayad and Stella O’Malley. 

As a mother who has been on this journey with her Trans-IDed daughter, I’ve worked hard to master the advice of these people determined to help families like mine: the listening skills, the genuine curiosity, focusing on topics that connect rather than divide us. I know the work I’ve done here has helped to heal our relationship. These techniques have helped me to become a much better communicator and conscious steward of the connection I have every intention of maintaining with my daughter. These practices have certainly helped me repair the damage done early in this journey when I was communicating out of intense fear for my girl, but there remained an energetic shield between us that was incredibly painful for me to experience. I’d worked so hard to create what I thought would always be an open relationship with my daughter and yet, here she was, pushing me away no matter what it seemed I did. 

Lately, I’ve sensed her shields are down. All the way down–like not even there anymore. She’s relaxed and quick to laugh, inviting me to accompany her on errands and spending hours in the evenings with me. We just returned from traveling to a large family event where she was among plenty of aunts, uncles, cousins, Grandma, and she didn’t flinch at the female references and uses of her birth name. She was engaged and happy–and open. Open seems the best word, or unguarded.

What’s changed? Me. I’ve changed. Of course, I can’t take all the credit. My daughter is approaching 18 after all; she’s maturing and it shows. Her need for the mask to hide behind, the fake self she’s presenting to the world as a shield around her sensitive and vulnerable heart, ie the coping mechanism that is Trans maybe feels a little less necessary as she enters this next phase of life. Maybe this is just me hoping we’re getting a glimpse of freedom from the grip of this rigid ideology that would demand my healthy daughter’s body as sacrifice, but I do believe in her. This is actually part of the change too. I’ll get to this later in this post.  

Let me start by saying I think the fear that grips parents in this situation is totally legit. This is a terrifying experience and the early years of my daughter’s adolescence caused my parenting confidence to take a devastating blow. With this said, I think this is how “they” get us. Communicating out of fear has got me nowhere good. Every time I’ve allowed that fear to overtake me during conversations with my child, I’ve done damage. I’ve been able to use these fear-hijacked interactions as opportunities to model relationship repair, but I knew I was never going to be able to influence her from this place. I had to find a way to operate from a place of trust: trust in myself, trust in the connection I have with my daughter, and trust in her.

Trust in myself. I was a pretty confident mom until this situation landed in my house. I tend to lean away from the mainstream, sometimes outright rejecting our culture, and this tendency has probably been my best friend the last few years since I have a high tolerance for social rejection and unorthodox solutions. Yet, this situation still rocked me to my core. I never thought I’d need to seek outside support to parent my children and I’m still disgusted at what I found when trying to do so.  I have to manage my contempt for those who would believe that they know our children better than we do. I’m grateful that I never bought into this. I have lots of thoughts on a culture that has decided they need to “save the children” from their own loving families. I’ll save those thoughts for another post, but this cultural perspective helped bring me back to my parenting intuition that took such a hit when my happy-go-lucky girl implied she might be harming herself and later when I learned she thought she was actually a boy. 

What was tripping me up was the block between my daughter and me. This caught me completely off guard since I’d worked so hard to have an open, trusting relationship with her–to be the mom she could always go to with questions and concerns about growing up. I had to press her to tell me what was going on, and this was certainly not a problem that in my wildest dreams I had anticipated. (It took a bit for me to recognize that she had been inducted into a cult and this would require a wholly different approach)  I started off calm and curious but thought she’d be able to hear my concerns and know that I am the one who loves her unconditionally and knows what’s best for her. When I realized I was not going to get through to her for the simple fact that I fill the role of mother for her is when the fear and desperation seized me. I behaved erratically in those early months. My daughter saw a side of me that I didn’t even know existed. This did not help me persuade her that I represented the rational side. I get pretty intense sometimes, and now I know how scary I can come across when I’m in “truth-telling” mode. 

I thought I could easily persuade her by just showing her the facts. Now we all know this isn’t what this is about. This is about who has our child’s heart. I don’t want to get too deep into how this all came about culturally, but it’s important to know that–for our family anyway–the way to keep our girl was to keep her heart. Trust in the connection. Focusing on the connection and knowing that I had the capacity to learn and change how I was showing up is what restored my trust in myself. And Stoicism–knowing what I can control and letting go of what I can’t, practicing and modeling what I want for my daughter, refusing to be a victim of this situation I didn’t ask for, reframing things in a way that helped me regain solid ground where I could recognize and act on my intuition as a mother. I learned the key was to pay attention to my energy. Am I acting out of fear or out of trust? 

To be able to stay in trust I also have to trust her. I know I have an incredibly intelligent, kind, socially-conscious, principled daughter. I know with absolute certainty that she’ll eventually recognize her heart and mind were captured by a rigid ideology and she’ll one day break free of its grip. I know she’ll be stronger and wiser on the other side of it. Every teen has their painful individuation work to do; this is hers. I believe in her. I know it’s crucial that she knows I trust her—that I know she’s doing her absolute best to make it through the pain of adolescence in this confusing world—and I must bring this energy with me to our interactions and try to make sure she knows this in any subtle way I can (she’s prickly about compliments.) 

I am someone who’s great at theory. I can intellectualize with the best of them. It’s practice that’s harder for me. If you’re anything like me and still in the earlier phases of figuring all this out, maybe I can save you some time with this tip: You have to get good at feeling. Fear is part of the journey and it’s important. It’s the fear that snaps us out of our complacent routines into action to protect our children. But if you let the fear drive the bus, you may end up going the wrong direction. Fear communicates that you don’t trust yourself, your connection, or your child. Make sense? You don’t trust this will all turn out okay. Is it alright that your child knows you fear for her? Sure, I suppose. I’ve forgiven myself for those erratic episodes and have explained to my children that’s what fearing for your loved ones looks like. I think it’s okay they know I love them that intensely, but my kids need to know that I got this. That our family has got this. And I don’t fear outside forces because I trust our connection. 

So you got this too right? Just kidding. This isn’t easy stuff. Maybe for some it is, but I can tell from all the PITT articles I read that most parents are marinating in fear soup. I recognize it because I did it too. It took me years, and I’m certainly not perfect at it, but I believe this practice of trust has saved my family. If I’d let the fear consume me and not found my way out of it, I would still be a complete wreck. My family would have fallen apart. Instead I feel more confident than ever. My relationships are stronger than ever. My daughter’s Trans-ID has been a gift to expedite my own individuation and get closer to becoming my best self. This is Stoicism. 

Okay, have I sold you on this? If so, you probably want to better understand how to do it. What does the practice actually look like? It starts with being really present and paying attention to what’s happening in your own body, especially when you’re thinking about or communicating with your “Archetypal FTM”. What does fear feel like for you? How do you know when you’re acting out of intuition–or out of conditioning? I got good at sensing the cortisol flooding my body–this is when I knew I was in fear and that if I didn’t shift the energy I would lose the connection and likely do damage. It takes being really present and some in-the-moment analysis of what is triggering you. Understand that if you’re getting triggered, that’s all about you. (Sometimes I think it is my daughter’s job to be really good at triggering me.) If you can quickly assess what’s escalating you, you might find you can let it go and, just like that, fill the room with peaceful vibes. The effects of this practice on the energy in my home are nothing less than profound. I recognize that as the Mom, my energy has high impact on my family. This is something in my control. And it’s a practice. It takes lots of effort at first, and you’ll start by just noticing when you’re operating out of fear and the outcomes of that. Practice self-compassion and when you botch it, know you can practice relationship repair and try again next time. You may even be able to springboard off of a conversation gone bad to give it another go. Be patient with yourself–your kid needs you to model this too. It gets easier. And you’ll find you have to do it less and less as the fear begins to just go away. Because now you trust. 

It’s important to note that sometimes others in your home will just be cranky and you can’t shift it. Sometimes you’ll be cranky. We all have bad moods. Recognizing this is what’s happening can help you to avoid communicating while in this state except to alert your loved ones of your mood, and also to not allow the energy of others to affect you. Their bad moods don't have to put you in one–it’s not about you even when they act like it is. This may all sound like basic stuff and maybe you already have this down, but maybe not. I’ve learned it never hurts to be reminded of the basics. Sometimes we slip into old habits and need to recommit to being in charge of ourselves. 

I want to reiterate this took lots of emotional work to get to the place that I was even capable of this practice. Mindfully reciting the Serenity Prayer at least daily. I absolutely had to come to a place of acceptance. I had to let go of my determination to “save” my daughter. Maybe this is more natural as her adulthood rapidly approaches, but I know I consciously worked on recognizing my daughter (and my 14yo son, for that matter) embrace a worldview that is different from my own. Some of this is individuation. Some is due to the influence of their social worlds and school environment. I’ve concluded this influence is pervasive; I couldn’t have shielded them from it without retreating to a completely off-grid existence, and I couldn’t have pulled this off without it causing a different kind of rebellion (trust me, I considered it.) So I did the emotional work to accept this. I find tremendous comfort in the relationship I have with my own mother—an amazing example of a Stoic even if she doesn’t see it that way—whose worldview I also rejected in early adulthood. Funny how similar our values are now and how we can both acknowledge that we just use different lexicons to describe the same things. Yes, I feel pain knowing it might actually take decades for my daughter to appreciate the work I’ve done as a result of what it took to parent her. I also know there’s the chance she never will–but I doubt it, she’s too awesome to not get it at some point. And I’m so grateful I get to parent her!

Speaking of lexicons, Part Two of this series on communicating will focus more on words and phrases that might be helpful when interacting with your Archetypal FTM. For now, I hope this has been helpful. If it has, please let me know in the comments. If you have questions, please ask them and I’ll do my best to answer. If you need more support to get to this energetic place as quickly as possible, consider working with me. I’m currently doing free discovery sessions and you can schedule one by filling out this Discovery Form.  Please also consider subscribing as this encourages me to keep writing. Paid subscriptions ensure I can keep offering this content without paywalls so anyone who needs it can access it.